According to Chao Deng of Marketwatch.com, China's birht rate fell by 4% in 2019, marking the third consecutive year of birth rate decline. While the Chinese government is putting in efforts to reverse this trend, it is already having consequences: nearly one fifth of China's population is age 60 or older, the population is swiftly aging, and the workforce is shrinking as more Chinese citizens retire. This may have negative impacts on the economy due to the price of labor increasing, not to mention healthcare as a larger portion of the population is elderly. Japan and South Korea apparently face similar problems, but on a much smaller scale than China is facing. They do, however, have a story to tell; other Asian countries who have experienced this phenomenon have shown that once declining, it is extremely difficult to get birth rate back up. This will likely bog down development in China to some extent, and experts at Capital Economics predict that China's growth rate will decrease by half a percentage point each year until 2030.
What do you think the Chinese government can do, if anything, to manage the impacts of this trend? What other consequences can you see arising from it that are not discussed in this article?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/red-flag-for-economic-growth-as-chinas-birth-rate-hits-lowest-level-in-modern-history-2020-01-21
7 comments:
I do agree that China's birthrates are concerning for their economic development and structure for the years to come. This could be due to previous measures such as the one child policy, which was relaxed in previous years, however is still embedded in people's mindsets. Their current two-child policy is clearly having a detrimental impact on the economy, and the government needs to perform measures to promote population growth. Increasing fertility rates and working to create cultural change towards attitudes regarding childbearing is necessary for the country to sustain their growth rates and development.
It is very difficult to influence things like birth rates and fertility, so China is definitely going to struggle a lot with this issue. The age cohort is more concerning though, as there will be more retired elderly people than those in the workforce, something we face in America with Social Security. Cultural change and relaxation seems to me the only feasible method of bolstering birth rates.
Going off of Sophia, I think that a lot of families are used to the 1 child policy and realized how much money they saved with only having one child. Families may be also scared to have many children because of how strict the government was when the policy was in place. And I also agree that innovation and technology will decrease in China because of the heavy amount of older people retiring. I think that China needs to give some incentive to help increase their population, otherwise the country is going to suffer
Considering what Chris said, I agree that at this point, it would be very difficult for China to return their birth rates to the averages of recent history. However, I consider China's birthrate to also be somewhat comparable to the rate at which their, and many other East Asian country's, economies grew. With incredibly rapid advancement of their economy, also came more and more babies. After China's one child policy, this began to fall dramatically. I believe that at this point their population is now finally beginning to stable out, much as their economy. It appears China's era of rapid growth is now catching up to its peak and it will begin to plateau.
I don't think China will be able to recover from lower birth rates because once there is a long period of time of lower and lower rates, this will have a negative impact on the economy in the long run. There will be an increase in demand for healthcare for seniors and retired citizens. There will be a shortage of labor in the workforce because there is no one to employ for jobs. Consumption in the future will also lower, which can cause GDP to lower and hinder the economy. Even if their birth rates increase from now on, we will still see the effects of the period of lowered birth rates in the long run.
China’s birth rate decreased in recent years, which is a hidden problem for me. Because I can not feel it in my daily life. The one-child policy was implemented in China in 1979, Which cause the population to decrease sharply in recent years. Chinese Government realizes the one-child policy has hurt the structure of China’s population. Therefore, the Chinese government officially introduced the two-child policy in 2015. However, as the world development at a highly speed, Younger generation feel very high working pressure in there life. The reason might be they were born during the one-child policy so that after they get married, they have to take care of both of their parents in China. Most people have to pay a house loan because the real estate market price was very high in China. The pressure was both financially and physically, therefore, they do not like to have extra pressure form their children. It is very expensive to foster a child in China. And there also have some people who do not want to get married early to limit their life. Therefore, even China’s government introduced the two-child policy, there not have that many people would like to have more child.
China is changing very rapidly in many ways. There is overcrowding in many of the major cities and that could be a possible deterrent along with many other factors. China is currently in a state where these numbers could mean a lot when you compare them to similar numbers, but at the same time they could mean nothing. Only time will tell if this decrease in birth rate is something to look into or if it's just a small trend that will die out.
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